Tag Archives: Oran Doyle

The continuing constitutional pressures of Brexit

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Ahead of the launch event for their new book on the continuing constitutional pressures of Brexit, Oran Doyle, Aileen McHarg and Jo Murkens summarise the book’s introductory essay. They conclude that, five years on from the seismic constitutional event that was the 2016 referendum, it is clear that Brexit is exerting pressure on various aspects of the constitution, but it remains too early to tell the full impact of Brexit on the UK constitution.

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union was clearly a development of major significance that affected the UK constitution and its three legal systems, and brought about a series of political crises. But the prolonged process of negotiating the terms of withdrawal and the future UK-EU relationship also imposed and exposed a range of other constitutional tensions and pressures. This is true not only in respect of the UK itself, but also for the EU – which experienced a major recasting of its external borders, a recalibration of internal decision-making dynamics, and challenges to core features of its constitutional order – and in particular for Ireland – which, by virtue of its geographic position and constitutional history, has faced unique political and constitutional challenges as a consequence of Brexit.

In The Brexit Challenge for Ireland and the United Kingdom: Constitutions Under Pressure, recently published by Cambridge University Press, scholars based in the UK and Ireland explore a wide range of constitutional, legal, and political issues affecting both countries which have arisen out of Brexit. These include questions of territorial governance within the UK, the renewed prospect and implications of a united Ireland, the use of constitutional referendums, the impact of Brexit on political parties, executive-parliamentary relations, and the role of the courts and law officers in constitutional disputes.

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Irish unification: processes and considerations

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Earlier this year, the International Association of Constitutional Law published a blog symposium on Irish Unification: Processes and Considerations, convened by Professor Oran Doyle. Here, Professor Doyle summarises the  contributions to the symposium. 

The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (GFA)—the agreement between the parties in Northern Ireland and the related international treaty between the British and Irish governments that was central to the peace settlement in 1998—built a new model of power-sharing politics on the foundation of a territorial compromise. On the one hand, Ireland and Irish nationalists accepted the legitimacy of Northern Ireland’s status as a component part of the United Kingdom. They thereby relinquished a territorial claim to the whole island of Ireland that had been advanced in different ways since independence and partition of the island of Ireland in 1921-22. On the other hand, the United Kingdom and unionists accepted that Northern Ireland would only remain part of the United Kingdom for as long as a majority of people in Northern Ireland so wished it. They thereby relinquished the right of the United Kingdom to preserve its own territorial boundaries.

In 1998, Irish unification seemed a distant prospect. The priority for most Irish nationalists—and certainly for all Irish governments—was to make the new political arrangements work, not to advocate for a united Ireland. But demographic change was slowly producing an electorate more open to unification, and Brexit has now dramatically increased the attractiveness of a united Ireland replete with EU membership. As a result, although opinions on the likelihood of a united Ireland diverge widely, the territorial compromise of 1998 is under pressure. Continue reading →